Central and Eastern European Migration Review

Migration from Eastern to Western Europe gained greater political prominence and scholarly attention both before and after the 2004 EU enlargement. The EU enlargement process not only contributed to a re-integration of European countries from the former Soviet bloc into the rest of Europe, but also set up a new framework for European mobility. A variety of forecasts and analyses concerning mobility across Europe have since been conducted, sometimes providing contradictory outcomes. This process of eastward enlargement was completed in 2007 by a second round, which brought Romania and Bulgaria into the European polity, and led to unjustified fears of massive flows from the two countries to some Western states in particular, such as the United Kingdom.

Academic discussion concerning the different types of mobility in Europe is, however, far from being exhausted. New issues have been raised by the economic crisis which is still sweeping the continent, by the demographic deficit affecting both Eastern and Western Europe, and by the next steps in the EU enlargement wave which will again involve South-Eastern Europe – especially the Western Balkan countries (other than Croatia which finally acceded in 2013). The aim of this special issue is to explore the variety of unprecedented processes in the field of migration which have emerged across Europe over the last decade. The papers in it seek to make sense of these processes, while trying to capture their evolving nature in the framework of a European migration system which has only been in existence for a relatively short time and which still lacks consolidated and harmonised rules.

Keywords: post-accession migration; statistics of migration from Poland to the UK; determinants of migration from Poland to the UK

Abstract

Despite the abundance of studies of Polish migration to the UK immediately before and in the aftermath of accession to the EU in 2004, one fundamental question has never been clearly answered: why did so many Poles move to the UK? We have sought to provide general explanations, rather than inquiring into the range of observed diversity. We begin by putting together statistical and other data from both ends of the flow in order to assess the scale of movement to and from the UK and to determine the reasons for what may well have been the largest voluntary migration between two countries. We used data from both countries and especially the recently published statistics from the 2011 UK census to present a detailed picture of the characteristics of those involved. Polish statistics suggest a more ‘elite’ flow to the UK than to other countries. The UK census pictures a maturing settled population, still tending to occupy relatively lower skilled jobs but showing evidence of upward social mobility. The movements are particularly a response to demographic and economic factors in Poland and to a widespread but to some extent hidden shortage of labour in some sectors in the UK. These factors combine with a set of political circumstances in both countries to produce an explanatory framework that may be summarised as ‘right people, right place, and right circumstances.’

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain 25 years ago, the asymmetric Central European labour market that was cut off by different legal systems gradually disappeared and has now been replaced by a unified migration space, where the costs for migration or pendular mobility and the wage gain which migrants can achieve are the decisive factors in the decision of whether to migrate or not. Official statistics show that, over the past ten years, migration from the new member-states of 2004 and 2007 to the EU15 in general and to Austria – a country directly bordering many of the new EU member-states – in particular, has significantly gained in importance. This new East-West migration is characterised by high qualification, a concentration on employment-relevant age groups and high spatial flexibility. Migrants are moving if wage differentials are significant and employment opportunities are given and they return or move further away if the labour market loses its attractiveness. The new East-West migration can provide gains for the target regions, for the regions of departure and for the migrants themselves.

Since Polish migrants began entering the UK labour market in the post-accession period, there has been a significant amount of case study research focusing on the impact of this large migrant group on the UK economy. However, ten years after enlargement, there is still insufficient information regarding the labour market mobility of Polish migrants residing in the UK for the longer term. The available research on this topic is largely concentrated in urban settings such as London or Birmingham, and does not necessarily capture the same patterns of labour market mobility as in non-urban settings. Using qualitative data collected in three case study locations – urban, semi-urban and rural – in the South Wales region from 2008–2012, this article has two main aims. First, given the proximity of the case study locations, the article highlights the diversity of the Polish migrant characteristics through the samples used. Second, using trajectories created from the data, this article compares the variations among the labour market movements of the Polish migrants in each sample to determine what characteristics influence labour market ascent. Through this comparative trajectory analysis, the findings from this article point to the relative English language competency of migrants as the primary catalyst for progression in the Welsh labour market across all three case study regions. The secondary catalyst, which is intertwined with the first, is the composition of the migrants’ social networks, which enable, or in some cases disable, labour market progression. These findings have significant implications in the national and in the supranational policy sphere regarding the employment of migrants as well as their potential for cultural integration in the future.

This paper examines Hungarian migration to the United Kingdom following EU accession. Migration from Hungary has generally been low both before and after accession, but trends have recently started to change. Based on the available statistical data, the paper explores the volume, key demographics and geographical distribution of this migration, and shows how a combination of economic, political and social factors is accountable for the migration of Hungarians to the United Kingdom. To give a human face to the phenomenon, the paper also builds on narrative interviews collected during recent ethnographic fieldwork in London, highlighting the role of economic decline, policy miscalculations, language competence and the online migration industry in shaping the motivations, aims and accommodation of migrants. The paper suggests that migration from Hungary may become more dominant in the second decade of the country’s EU membership than it has been during the first ten years.

The period after May 2004 – when Poland acceded to the European Union – until the onset of the recession in the UK in late 2007 saw a multitude of British employment agencies bringing migrant workers from Poland and placing them in temporary employment in the food industry, in construction, in social care, and in jobs in logistics and transport. Up to one half of the migrants who arrived in the UK after 2004 found work through an agency. As they arrived, a growing number of media and NGO reports highlighted both the exploitative living and working conditions in which many Polish workers found themselves and the role of agencies in this. Yet, the specific role of agencies as intermediaries between employers and workers has been comparatively neglected within the wealth of scholarly literature that analyses post-2004 East–West migration. This article documents how and why agencies recruited Polish workers into the UK labour market after May 2004. It argues that recruiting from Poland was a ‘market-making’ strategy for agencies, specifically linked to resolving a temporary crisis in finding a sufficient supply of workers willing to work in temporary agency jobs for low wages and in poor working conditions. The success of this new competitive strategy for agencies rested on: 1) marketing Polish nationals to employers as ideal-type ‘flexible’ workers, and 2) how quickly and easily they could move recruits from Poland into the workplace in the UK. This research contributes to an emerging body of work that analyses the competitive behaviour of agencies and the low-wage markets in which they are embedded, and to an also emerging body of literature exploring the role of migration intermediaries within Europe and internationally.

Globalisation is a ubiquitous influence in rural Europe, offering both opportunities and challenges. The liberalisation of travel restrictions, in addition to the growth and development of transport and global communication networks, have contributed to an international mobility that promotes patterns of migration, return migration and repeat emigration from and to rural regions. Return migration in particular represents a stimulating field of research, as thought-provoking as it is diverse. In some regions, migrants return to their native country to play a pivotal role in the economic, social, and cultural vibrancy of a local rural community, while in others, migrants find themselves excluded and isolated. Investigating this diversity of experience, this paper presents analysis of findings from research carried out as part of the FP7 DERREG1 project. Thirty-six biographies of return migrants (from the west of Ireland and Alytus County, Lithuania) were generated, allowing an understanding of how various life trajectories develop, reasons behind decisions, feelings regarding relocation and reintegration, and the experience of returning to a rural location. Drawing on transnationalism and social network theory, this paper reveals the complexity of contemporary return migration experiences and the similarities and diversities that exist between Western and Eastern Europe. Key issues to emerge include the context dependency of return migrant behaviour and their further life choices, integration, and the shift in migrants’ value priority scale from economic to social values.

This article offers an overview of the longer-term migratory and demographic developments in eight South-East European countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia). The main research question aims to analyse the different demographic historical developments and to examine whether convergent or divergent processes are dominant. Over the whole reference period, the population size in these eight South-East European countries (the SEEMIG region) grew from around 100 million people in 1950 to 122 million in 2011. This is surprising, as the public image of the region is linked to decline and backwardness and to being peripheral. However, major differences in the demographic developments of the countries can be observed. Some countries, including Austria, Italy and, with some fluctuations, Slovakia and Slovenia, experienced constant population growth during the entire reference period. All other countries were affected by a decrease in population, as was the case for Hungary in the early 1980s, Bulgaria at the beginning of the 1990s and Serbia and Romania since the start of the new millennium. The fertility trend shows a convergence while the mortality trends (including average life expectancy at birth) prove to be divergent. The net migration pattern seems to follow a migration cycle concept which postulates a general shift from emigration to immigration as a consequence of a declining natural increase on the one hand and a growing demand for new labour on the other. Some countries show trends that do not yet follow this pattern, which might indicate that additional factors and interpretative models should also be taken into account. The long-term distribution of growth and decline in the region is quite diverse and underlines the need for differentiation and specific explanations.

Bulgaria’s European Union accession in 2007 turned the country’s citizens from third-country nationals with restricted mobility rights into EU citizens with rights to free movement within the EU. Economic rights were restricted for seven years by transitional periods in the free movement of workers. This article explores changes in the Bulgarian migration pattern to Germany after 2007 in the specific context of free movement with restricted freedom to work, and analyses the extent to which those changes can be related to that particular regime. Starting from this point, Bulgarian migration patterns to Germany are overviewed and a periodisation of migration since the World War II is suggested. Changes in the dynamics, forms and composition of migration after EU accession in 2007 are analysed, based on administrative data and a small-scale survey among Bulgarian migrants in Hamburg. Both the administrative data and the survey results provide empirical grounding for a plausible relation between EU accession and migration patterns. The scale of migration has increased and more temporary migration has taken place. However, the rise of migration can be attributed not only to new migration from Bulgaria but also, to a large extent, to a redirection of migration flows from other destination countries and the legalisation of irregular migrants. Circular migration has lost to a great extent relevance which could be plausibly explained by changed migration strategies under a regime of free movement. Despite transitional periods in the free movement of workers, labour migration has become a predominant form of mobility. Transitional periods did not prevent migrants from moving to Germany but, given the reduced labour market opportunities, may have hampered their successful labour market integration.

Raj Bhopal’s Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Health in Multicultural Societies (2014) (hereafter ‘Migration’) is an important and timely contribution to the literature on ethnicity and health. Not only does it present its content in a sensitive and pragmatic way, it is highly accessible, engaging and up-to-date. ‘Migration’ is effectively a second edition of Ethnicity, Race and Health in a Multicultural Environment: Foundations for Better Epidemiology, Public Health and Health Care (published in 2007). In this latest edition, Public Health expert Raj Bhopal focuses mainly on the fluidity of defining a person’s identity and how this has developed over time into concepts based on ethnicity, national borders, religion, immigration status, a sense of belonging and identity. The new engagement in this edition with the changing nature of migration and how this affects health-seeking behaviours, the delivery of services and health outcomes is its most significant and novel contribution to current debates.

In his preface to the paperback edition of The British Dream, David Goodhart claims that many readers will approach the book with an opinion of it already formed by their preexisting position on immigration. Indeed, this controversial book has become something of a lightning rod for both opponents and supporters of stricter immigration controls for the United Kingdom. Progressives can argue that Goodhart has betrayed the notion of transnational solidarity in favour of exclusivism. Conservatives, meanwhile, are armed with data to suggest that the multicultural project has been a failure. Although it may be something of a pre-emptive deflection of criticism, Goodhart claims that he has been widely attacked in print and routinely accused of racism (p. x) since publishing the first edition of The British Dream. He fails to cite published examples of this accusation, but Goodhart at least deserves to have this charge dismissed from the outset. The British Dream could, in the hands of someone already predisposed to an idea of racial hierarchy, potentially be used to further a racist agenda. That would require, however, a determined distortion of its key arguments. In the most politically neutral terms available, these basically contend that post-war immigration to Great Britain has produced a mixed record of success and failure, with some immigrant groups becoming quickly and demonstrably prosperous, while others remain ‘stuck’ in a socio-economic underclass. To be clear, ‘race’ is not the key determining factor in these outcomes. Rather, the forces that do exert such influence are considerably more complex and highly specific to the context in which large-scale immigration occurs.

Latest News

Central and Eastern European Migration Review (CEEMR) invites proposals for a Special Issue or Special Section for the years 2020 and 2021. The proposed topics should address processes and problems related to international mobility to and from Central and Eastern Europe. The dynamically changing migratory and social reality of contemporary societies and the role that the CEE region plays in these developments provide for a rich variety of topics that deserve the attention of researchers and political actors.

Adaptation of the CEEMR website – modernisation and update of the content – for application for indexation in international publications databases, in particular Scopus and DOAJ, as well as proofreading of articles in English are financed from the funds of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education allocated for the dissemination of science under the agreement 765/P-DUN/2016.